Jako was a naturally gifted artist. He began showing advanced talent at an incredibly young age. When his mother displayed some of his
drawings to the teachers at the elementary school, they found it hard to believe and tested him at the school. They were amazed by their
"discovery." As everybody began making plans for his future, Jako rebelled and sought out his own way.

He was naturally gifted with pencils and soon mastered the craft of oil painting. One of his earliest oil works "Jesus" won second
place in the Mid-Atlantic Art Competition sponsered by the boys' club of America when he was nine years old. It was a white canvas with
patches of black. It just looked like smears of black on white. One had to stare at it for quite some time and then suddenly the shadowed
face of the savior emerges from one of the blotches and pops into view. Once you "saw it" you couldn't "unsee" it and it made you wonder
why it took so long to see it. It was truly an amazing painting for a young child. The original is in the possession of one of his oldest
and dearsest friends. He followed that one up with another one that was well-beyond his years. It was an abstract oil painting of a human
stomach with people twisting and writhing in its acid as though in some kind of hell. The painting was titled "Consumption of the Self" and
it won first place in the Mid-Atlantic Art Competition for abstract/surrealism. He was only 11.

In Junior High and High School he was a standout artist and was often freed from the "class projects" to work on his own ideas. He excelled in every medium with which he worked: clay, batiking, drawing, oils, water colors, pastels, crayons, wood sculpting, collaging, and on and on.

In his 20s, Jako studied art formally under the direction of Paul Jay at the Community College Visual Arts Annex. He spent hour upon hour everyday working on projects designed by Paul. For twenty weeks he worked four hours each day on figure studies (drawing the human form from a live model). On tuesday nights, he regularly turned up at an artist's loft across town where he would do more figure studies. During this period Jako's eye became much sharper than it had been up to that point and his work became much more mature and developed.

In the 1990s Jako made the transition from traditional graphic production to computer-based methods. He upgraded his equipment and retooled his old LP record templates to accept designs for CD and DVD packging. He began designing web graphics and web sites in 1998. Since "going digital" Jako has produced thousands of pieces of work including over 120 CD packages and 50 DVD packages. He has also designed and programmed 86 web sites.

In the analog and digital worlds, Jako continues to produce a high volume of work. He rarely declines a design offer. In the near future he hopes to return to a less hectic life and do more oil paintings.